


go forward slowly

by Chrome



Series: and by morning [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (nothing current or graphic), Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Canon Compliant, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Friendship, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Canon, yakov pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 10:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: It's easy to be fooled by things that look open, even when they're truly concealed from you.---Yuri knows that some things should not be kept secret.Viktor knows love is not unconditional.Yakov does not know everything.





	go forward slowly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stammiviktor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor/gifts).



> This story is for and with all gratitude to [Allison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammiviktor), without whom it quite literally would not exist. You're wonderful. Endless thanks also go to [Rakel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar), the best beta in the world (and, to my delight, my Viktuuri Bang partner!).
> 
> This story is the second of a series. I would recommend reading [and by morning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14368380) first.
> 
> Please mind the tags.

A long time ago, when Yakov was a young man, a lover had given him a piece of sea glass, light blue, about the size and shape of a coin. They had been walking along the strip of stony coastline that passed for a beach in Sevastapol and some glint of light had caught her eye. She had picked it up and examined it, then passed it to him with some comment about giving him something to remember the moment. He doesn’t remember what he said back, or even her features, but he has the piece of glass in a desk drawer, so in some way, perhaps it worked.

It isn’t really about the sentiment; he has just never felt the need to throw it away. There’s not much remarkable about it, aside from the size and the color. Yakov has seen other seaglass, mostly in green and amber, and usually smaller and more translucent.

That is the other thing about this piece of glass. From a distance it looks translucent, but even when he holds a finger to the back of it and lifts the shard up to the light, he can’t see even an outline through it. It is utterly opaque even though it looks clear, a little sky-colored fragment of deception.

It’s easy to be fooled by things that look open like that, even when they’re truly concealed from you. Yakov knows this. He has a piece of seaglass and an Olympic bronze from almost fifty years ago and an ex-wife to remember it by.

And really, he should have known, because that piece of glass is almost the same color as Vitya’s eyes and gives away exactly as much.

Yuri is the second student who has lived with Yakov and Lilia, and raising Yurochka is different in as many ways as it is the same as raising Vitya. In some ways they are similar, of course, but in the subtle ones they are different. Vitya was always a neat child, while Yura’s things tend to explode across his room until Lilia snaps at him to pick up his clothes. Yura is subtle with his affection, performatively reluctant to hug, every request coming out half like a demand. Vitya was not, is not; Vitya throws himself across a crowded room to hug people and speaks three and a half languages but knows how to ask “Can I pet your dog?” in twelve and when someone smiles at him he always, without fail, smiles back.

Yet Yurochka is easy to read, even when he’s pretending at anger to hide that he’s upset, even when he slams the door to his bedroom or sits sullen and silent straight through dinner. It’s a relief to have a teenager in the house whose moods are at least translucent, the shape of the reality visible through the screen.

The most dangerous words Yakov knows are Vitya’s, a finger pressed to his lips, saying, “Yakov, I’ve been thinking.” Yakov never knows what Vitya’s been thinking. Sometimes it’s a new routine, the choreography half-perfect already even as he sketches it out carelessly across the ice, and Yakov remembers why people say this ridiculous boy is a genius, is the greatest figure skater who ever lived. Sometimes it’s something pointless, a thought about something he saw on television last night, about whether Makkachin can understand the weather forecast.

There are a few times, particularly as a teenager, that Vitya says, “Yakov,” in that same tone, the tone that means he has something to say, and Yakov says, “What, Vitya?” and he says, after a moment, “Never mind!”

Yakov does not think of these things in general. When you are seventy years old and somehow half-raising a teenager with your ex-wife and responsible for several of the greatest figure skaters in the world, you do not waste much time on sentiment. He remembers only when it matters: when Yurochka is sulking and he needs to smooth it over, when he and Lilia find themselves face to face alone in the kitchen early in the morning and can’t remember how they used to speak to each other, when his fingers catch a weathered piece of glass as he looks in a drawer for a spare key.

Or, now: when Yuri is fumbling jumps and staring at Viktor and Katsuki running step sequences across the rink and refusing to look Yakov in the eye.

“Enough!” Yakov finally roars when Yuri two-foots a double axel. “What is going on?”

“Nothing!” Yuri snaps, staring across the ice.

“Look at me, not at them!” Yuri reluctantly turns to face Yakov, sulky, like a child expecting to be caught in wrongdoing. “Is something wrong?”

“No!” Yuri snarls. “It’s fine, let me do it again.”

“You’re not focusing,” Yakov snaps.

“I am!” Yuri is yelling but at least looking at Yakov, although now Katsuki and Viktor have turned as one and are looking across the rink at Yurochka.

“You’re not,” says Yakov, “Or you’d be landing a double axel!”

Yuri gives him a wordless snarl. It’s barely the start of the season, and Yurochka is already in one of these moods. It will be a difficult one. He’s started a growth spurt that hasn’t yet completely destroyed his balance, but it’s only a matter of time and Yakov knows he’s bound to be insufferable while he waits to figure out what to do with his body.

Still, it isn’t his balance that’s the problem today. He’s not paying proper attention, snapping when Yakov gives him perfectly reasonable criticism and staring across the rink at Viktor and Katsuki.

Yakov makes Yuri do spins and watches him. These are better; he’s still not completely engaged, but they’re more measured than the jumps. Yurochka’s hair is in a braid rather than a ponytail—or something very like a braid, if the person began at the scalp on both sides and only knitted the pieces back together into one at the base of the skull. It looks more time-consuming and complicated than he’d given Yurochka credit for.

The pieces click together. When Yuri comes out of the camel spin and looks up, Yakov says, “Did something happen last night?”

“What?”

“Last night,” Yakov says. “You stayed over with Katsuki and Vitya. Did something happen?”

“No!”

Yurochka is talented at many things for a sixteen-year-old, but lying is not one of them. His answer drips defensiveness.

Still, Yakov has not spent years as a coach without learning a thing or two about how to handle teenagers. If Yuri doesn’t want to tell him what’s wrong, insisting will do nothing but push him further back into his shell. “Fine,” he says, and lets it drop. “Do it again.”

He lets Yurochka attempt another wobbly spin and takes a good look for himself at Katsuki and Viktor. There is nothing wrong, he decides, tracking their movements on the ice. Viktor is a hands-on coach, literally in the case of Katsuki, and they close all distance between them after every exercise. Sometimes Yakov can track the intent—Viktor shifting Yuuri’s leg position so a step lands more smoothly, adjusting a piece of choreography, swapping places at the side of the rink to demonstrate something. Periodically, they seem to come together for no reason at all, as if six inches apart is the furthest they can bear to stand. After half a century of this, Yakov can track movement across a rink as easily as breathing, and Yuuri and Viktor’s dance hasn’t shifted during the month they spent in Japan. If anything, it’s simply become more practiced, attuned to each other.

He’d worried for half a second that Yura had seen some sort of rift between them, a fracturing of the relationship. He and Lilia are careful not to raise their voices towards each other or snap in front of Yuri. He’s sensitive to it, and Yakov still feels hints of guilt when he remembers just how many of their arguments Vitya sat through, his smile going small and tight across the dinner table.

But Viktor and Yuuri move in step with each other, an eternal improvised pair skate. Viktor’s ring flashes on his hand across the rink. Whatever Yura keeps looking for, Yakov can’t see it.

Yuri topples out of a particularly wobbly spin and Yakov snaps across the rink, “Katsuki!” Viktor and Yuuri turn as one.

“Yes, Coach Feltsman?” Katsuki asks, his voice going up uncertainly.  _ Coach,  _ always, even though Katsuki isn’t his student and his actual student hardly bothers with formality.

“Come show Yura a flying sit spin, since he cannot seem to focus on his own.”

Yuri makes a snarling noise; Viktor and Katsuki close the distance together, Viktor complaining loudly.

“You can’t boss my student around, Yakov,” Viktor says. “It’s his practice time.”

“We were almost done anyway,” Yuuri assures them after a flicker of a glance at Viktor. Yakov thinks it is to ensure that Viktor wasn’t truly annoyed. Sometimes Yakov can’t tell, if he’s honest with himself, but Viktor sighs loudly and says nothing more and Katsuki skates over without another glance.

“Fine,” Viktor says. “If it will help Yurio, I suppose.”

Yuri lets out an annoyed little hiss, but it’s more halfhearted than Yakov expects. Before he can consider it too closely, Viktor is talking again. “Then you can take a look at this choreography.”

“Fine.” Yakov goes with Viktor, but he keeps half an eye on the other two skaters. He expects sparks of tension, maybe something vicious, but Yura stays sulky and nothing more. Katsuki, forever helpful, drops easily into the spin as a demonstration. It’s worrisome only because it isn’t.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say nothing was wrong.

“Yakov,” Viktor complains, “First you distract my student, then you pay me no attention. You and I are both getting old the longer I stand here!”

“I’m already old,” Yakov grumbles at him, eyes flickering back to Viktor. It’s true—blessedly true—that Viktor is not a teenager anymore. Yakov can’t imagine coping with teenage Vitya at the same time as teenage Yura. They would eat each other alive. And Viktor is right in that twenty-eight is old for a professional skater. Yakov is intimately familiar with the damage that years of jumps, falls on the ice, and constant brutal training can do to a body. It is only a combination of luck and stubbornness and uncharacteristic caution that have carried Viktor this far.

At the same time, from the vantage point of seventy, twenty-eight seems impossibly young. “I’m watching,” Yakov says. “Skate.”

Viktor lets out a little huff, but then he settles onto his skates, goes from Viktor feigning annoyance to Viktor who is taking this seriously. And this, for as capricious as Vitya is, as dramatic as he can be, is why people call him a living legend.

It’s a half-completed thought, the choreography, but it’s beautiful. It is surely to something soft and delicate; Viktor’s steps are sharp-edged and tentative and precise. Always so precise. Yakov hasn’t had to scold him for sloppy edges since he was a teenager.

He finishes with his head tilted up, a single palm lifted upwards as though in supplication. Vitya has never prayed in his life, Yakov knows, so the pose seems especially vulnerable.

Then it breaks and his smile comes back. “What do you think?”

“Could be promising,” Yakov begrudges. “Do you have music?”

“Of course,” Viktor says. “I’ll play it for you.”

He goes to retrieve his cell phone from the boards. Yakov takes the opportunity to glance back at Katsuki and Yuri. Yuri’s spin does look better, now, as though he’s actually starting to focus a little, to listen to Katsuki’s advice. Yakov had considered the possibility, last winter when Viktor had moved back to St. Petersburg with his new fiancé in tow, that they would throw everything off-kilter. Katsuki would distract Vitya, who already had the attention span of a fish. Katsuki and Vitya would both distract Yura, who was too easily baited for his own good. It could have been a disaster.

But with the exception of Yura’s odd behavior this morning, all of Yakov’s fears have failed to materialize. Viktor is as focused as ever when it’s his turn on the ice, and when it’s Katsuki’s he turns that laser-sharp gaze on his student. Yakov still isn’t sure if Viktor’s a good coach—some days, he isn’t sure if  _ he’s _ a good coach—but he’s an effective one, because Katsuki has gone from a beautifully talented but inconsistent skater to something more, confident and sure of himself on the ice.

Yuri pulls out of the spin and Katsuki smiles his approval. Yakov is about to turn back when he sees Yura lose focus again, when he catches a glimpse of Viktor out of the corner of his eye, skating towards the boards. Yura looks at Viktor, gives Yakov half a glance, turns back to Katsuki but his mind is clearly elsewhere.

So that’s how it is, Yakov supposes. At least he knows.

Viktor skates back over, phone in hand. “I’m still looking for something for Yura,” he says. “But I’ve been sure of mine for a while.”

“Whose Yura?”

“Yura,” Viktor says. “Our Yura. Not Yuuri.”

“Why are you looking for a piece for Yura?” Yakov asks.

“He asked me for a short program,” Viktor says. Then he smiles a little. “I’m sure he didn’t say. I wonder who will be the one to tell Lilia.”

Yakov can feel the vein pulse in his forehead. The way his life is going, he will be the one to tell Lilia that Yura is refusing her carefully planned program in favor of whatever Vitya can come up with. He will have to endure her silent fury across the breakfast table, equally spread between him and Yuri, who will swallow down his own glowering.

Yakov has spent years enduring this sort of animosity between them, though. He wonders how much longer Yuri will be both his and Lilia’s. For now, Yuri is still listening to him, going to him for coaching and Lilia for dance instructions. But his body is changing. He will not be Lilia’s prima ballerina for much longer, and he is pushing back against her choreography.

If Yura and Lilia part ways, then Yakov and Lilia surely will too.

The thought doesn’t merit the weight he immediately wants to give it. He and Lilia parted a long time ago, and it is a strange intersection of their professional interests that has brought them back into orbit. Yura will make his own decisions as surely as Vitya has, and Yakov will live with what comes.

“What have you done to Yura?” Yakov asks, instead.

“Done?” Viktor raises an eyebrow. “I’ve done nothing. I’m hurt, actually—he asked me for a program of his own free volition.”

“He’s distracted,” Yakov says. “I know it’s because of you.”

“How unfair,” says Viktor. “I haven’t done anything.”

He hasn’t done anything in Yakov’s field of vision, which is not much of a comfort, but it is fortunately all that falls into Yakov’s jurisdiction at the moment.

Yakov sighs. “Play it.”

Viktor hits play on his phone. Lovely is the only word for it—it’s a sweet, careful piano piece, starting off slow and simple and then picking up into something smooth and faster, overlapping like falling water.

They stand there for the full two and a half minutes while it plays, and then Yakov nods.

“It’ll do.” It suits what he’s seen of Viktor’s steps, and it’s in good taste. Viktor’s taste in music is usually good. He likes classical pieces, piano and violin. He’s afraid to know what Yura will pick someday, left to his own devices.

Viktor beams, like he knows that this is the closest thing to a compliment his selection is likely to get. “It’s called ‘Home.’”

“Is that your short program?” Yuri asks. He and Katsuki have skated over and so they’ve collected a small audience.

“Yes!” Viktor chirps. “It reminds you of Hasetsu, doesn’t it? Like the waves coming in.”

Katsuki looks at Viktor with a soft expression, his hand drawing up and forming a fist against his chest. It’s an unconsciously expressive gesture, the way he does it.

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “I think it’s a good name for it.”

“Have you decided a piece with Lilia?” Yakov asks. “It’s already June.”

Yuri looks shifty, which is a waste of energy considering that Viktor’s already spilled the beans, but Yakov doesn’t mind making him sweat a little.

“No,” Yuri says, eventually.

Yakov raises an eyebrow. “Have you decided one with Vitya, then?”

Yuri freezes and then shoots a look at Viktor.  Vitya just shrugs. “He’s your coach, he’ll have to find out eventually!”

“No,” Yuri says after another moment. “But Otabek sent me some things—I’ll text you.”

“Okay,” Viktor says, careless.

Katsuki just smiles. He doesn’t always talk much even though he understands, because they try to use English at the rink when Katsuki is there. Part of it is for politeness’ sake, and part of it is because Viktor will translate everything with daggers in his smile if they don’t. Yakov is always a little relieved to slip back into Russian when it’s just him and Yuri or him and Vitya. Yuri is more crass in English and a little more terse, too, because his vocabulary isn’t very good. Viktor is faster in Russian, the words a torrent, whereas they’re a little slower and more careful in English, as smooth as it is.

With Viktor, Yakov suspects at times that it’s less about his proficiency in the language than it is about his training. English is a language that Viktor learned to deal with the press from the time of his first Olympics, seventeen years old and stunned by the gold in his hand, stumbling his way through interviews in a language he barely understood. He’d smiled his way through it, but it had dropped off his face afterwards, watching himself drop articles and struggle to find the right words on the television.

His English had gotten much better, much more quickly after that. The Russian books on his shelf made way for English ones, and by the time his winning streak started, few people seemed to remember that it had never been his mother tongue.

Still, English has always been the language that Viktor uses to present a front to the world, the language he practiced and practiced so that he would never struggle in front of a camera again. Yakov wondered at first what that would mean for him and Katsuki, whose only overlap in languages is Yuuri’s second and Vikor’s third. They seem to have developed their own vocabulary, though, English with asides in Japanese, the occasional phrase in Russian, and a pattern of physical affection that they understand perfectly.

Yakov would like to think that he and Lilia were once in sync like that, years ago when they first fell in love, but he isn’t sure anymore.

Either way, Yakov’s mental checklist has gone from Katsuki and Viktor to Katsuki and Yura to Yura and Viktor, and he still hasn’t found a solution to Yuri’s odd behavior. Even now, Yuri is watching Viktor far too carefully, but with no anger in his expression. Yakov follows his gaze and can’t see it, like staring strained at a blue sky for a bird someone else insists is there.

Yakov doesn’t like that feeling.

“Fine,” Yakov says. “We’re done, Yura.”

“What?” Yuri wheels around. “Why!”

“You’re distracted,” Yakov says flatly. “If you don’t want to tell me what it is, fine, but I won’t have you skating when you’re too busy watching Vitya to look at your own feet.”

Viktor turns and gives Yuri a look. It’s a concerned look, but there’s a hint of warning to it, and Yuri seems to catch it because he scowls back.

“Yuuri and I will finish up,” Viktor says lightly, as Yuri stomps off towards the locker room. “Then we can practice.”

“Ballet in two hours!” Yakov yells at Yura’s retreating back. He makes a gesture that might be acknowledgment and Yakov gives up.

Once Yuri is out of sight, his strange demeanor slips from Yakov’s mind. Katsuki and Vitya are their typical selves, and they finish up with a few more jumps at Katsuki’s insistence. Sometimes Yakov front-loads jumps in his own skater’s practice, because tired skaters are more likely to make mistakes, but Katsuki’s always had impressive stamina and his programs themselves tend to be backloaded, so it’s not the most senseless choice to make.

When they finish, Viktor follows Yuuri to the boards and kisses him there until Yakov clears his throat and he reluctantly detaches himself. With Viktor still having practice, it makes no sense for him to follow Katsuki off the ice, but he clearly wants to.

Still, he regains his focus once Yuuri is gone, which Yakov will settle for. He has been Viktor’s coach for a long time for a good reason—they work well together. They run jumps and then variations on Viktor’s program, trying to decide the composition. Like any piece his students pick, he has no doubt that by the end of the season every bar of the piano composition will be ingrained in his mind.

At some point, he turns, and discovers that Yuri has returned, sitting on a bench by the rink. Viktor notices once Yakov does, but he seems unbothered by it, so Yakov puts the strangeness of earlier firmly from his mind.

After practice, Viktor sits on the bench to unlace his skates. Yakov leaves them talking to drop things off at the office, and they have somehow escalated to a full-blown argument once he returns.

“I told you before,” Viktor is saying when he walks back in. “It doesn’t matter. And you did promise.”

“He needs to know,” Yuri says.

“Why?” Viktor says. “Because you think so? We are not the same person, Yura. You shouldn’t worry so much about it.”

“But,” Yuri says, in a strange tone of voice. “He needs to—I can’t  _ lie. _ ”

“It’s hardly a lie,” Viktor says. “You’re a teenager, you lie constantly anyway, don’t pretend it’s some great moral dilemma.”

“It’s a lie,” Yuri insists.

“Not even of omission,” Viktor says. “Is it a lie when I don’t tell you what I eat for breakfast? Of course not. It will never come up.”

“What will not?” Yakov interrupts.

Yuri wheels around, looking like he’s been caught at something. Viktor looks entirely calm.

“Hello, Yakov,” Viktor says. Yuri looks cowed by his presence, somehow. He stays quiet.

“What is it?” Yakov repeats.

“It’s not important,” Viktor says.

For some reason, this sets Yuri off. He jumps to his feet and the words come out in a rush. “It’s important and he should know!”

Yakov is worried now, because Yuri sounds legitimately unsettled, and he can think of very little that would do that. He’s had students before who were tattle-tales, goody-two-shoes with overdeveloped moral compasses, or simply the sort who enjoyed throwing their rinkmates under the bus. Yuri is not one of those students—for one thing, he keeps plenty of his own secrets. Yakov knows he’s gone out when he wasn’t supposed to, broken rules, fooled around. He’s stubborn. He’s not a rule-follower. Viktor is right that Yuri has no moral objection to a lie, not on principal.

That means that whatever this is, it’s not some petty childhood indiscretion. It’s something serious. Yuri does not get caught up in moral nuances—if he thinks Yakov ought to know, then Yakov ought to know.

“What is it, then?” Yakov asks.

“I don’t know,” Viktor shrugs. “What is it, Yuri?”

Yuri grits his teeth. “Viktor…”

“What?” Viktor says. “There’s nothing to say.”

Yuri is scowling, fists clenched so hard he’s practically vibrating. Yakov can’t tell if it’s nerves or incandescent rage. “There is.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow.  “Would you like to say it, if you’re so sure? Because I can’t think of anything that Yakov needs to know.”

“He does and you know it,” Yuri says. He shoots Yakov a pleading look. It’s odd on his face; Yuri doesn’t do pleading. Yakov has had plenty of students who do—Viktor, who coaxes and cajoles and begs for what he wants, of course, but plenty of others who went for pouting and puppy-dog-eyes. Not Yuri, though. He demands what he feels he’s due.

The fact that he’s asking at all is uncanny—and Yakov isn’t even sure what he wants.

Viktor doesn’t seem moved. If anything, he’s gone stiffer than usual, more dismissive. He’s been making an effort with Yuri, Yakov knows, more offers of friendship and fewer forgotten promises. The chill that’s practically emanating off of him now is nothing but deliberate.

“What, then?” Viktor says. “Surely you can explain yourself.”

Yuri visibly gathers himself. “At Worlds,” he begins.  “At the banquet. This man came up to me and.” The sentences are coming out short and choppy, as though words have suddenly become scarce. “He was kind of weird and shit. And Katsudon came and got me.”

If anything, the situation has become even less clear. “What?”

“It was that.” Yuri stops again and this time he looks at Viktor and then at Yakov and back at Viktor. “Or, it was—” he cuts off again.

There is a moment of silence. Yakov wants to grab Yura by the shoulders and shake him, demand that he say what he means.  Viktor’s expression has twisted into something unpleasant.

“You can’t even say it. All of this, and you won’t say it.”

Yura looks furious, but for once the rage doesn’t seem to be able to break through the inaction.  He stands there glowering and silent.

“What?” Yakov says, annoyed and worried all at once. “Who approached you and why was Katsuki involved?” And if it was about another man or the Japanese skater, why was it Viktor who was arguing so vehemently against it?

“Fine,” Viktor bites out. His skates are off now and his shoes back on, and he stands up. “What Yura is so desperate to tell you is that he had a brief conversation with a man who raped me.”

Annoyance flees in an instant, leaving confusion on its own and something worse, cold and heavy. There is a long moment where he wonders if he’s heard him correctly, if he somehow has not understood, but then he looks Viktor in the eye and sees that the cold glass has fractured open and pain has welled up underneath.

Whatever Yakov had thought to say, the words are gone now.

“At _Worlds?”_ _I don’t understand_ , is what he wants to say, what he means, and _how could I not have known?_

“Yes.”

“This year?” Yakov is trying to do the math, figure out when there was time, if there was a minute he saw Viktor with anyone but Katsuki—

“Me? No,” Viktor says.

“When?”

“At Worlds years and years ago,” Viktor says, with the casual air of someone recounting their day.

“Thirteen years ago,” Yuri says.

“And now you find your voice,” Viktor snaps. “What was that, proving a point?”

“He needed to know,” Yuri says. “Yakov needed to know.”

“I think I can decide for myself who needs to know,” Viktor says. “Thank you very much.”

“You should have told him,” Yura says. Yakov feels like a spectator in some sort of cruel sparring match rather than a participant in a conversation now.

“What, Yura,” Viktor says with such coldness that he makes the diminutive sound like an invective. “You don’t think I can make my own decisions about who to trust?”

“You were wrong,” Yuri snaps, and he shoots a quick little glance at Yakov, just like before, as though he’s looking for support or intervention.

It doesn’t come in time. “Frequently, it seems,” Viktor says resignedly. “After all, I trusted you.”

Yuri sucks in a breath. There is half a second where it looks like Viktor has heard himself, like he might regret it, but then it’s gone and his expression is ice all over again. “Goodbye,” he says, and he snatches up his skate bag and is gone.

Yuri’s eyes have welled up with tears. “Stupid—” he snarls and whirls around, but Yakov can read the grief below the rage even when he can no longer get a good look at his expression.

“Yura—” Yakov begins, and then the door swings open and Lilia walks into the rink.

“I’ve been outside for ten minutes,” Lilia says, annoyed. “If you’re running late you should call.”

Lilia is giving him a cold look. Yakov isn’t sure when this started anymore, when they stopped giving each other the benefit of the doubt. That’s what happens when you’re divorced, he thinks; it’s lucky that they never had any of their own children to get caught in the crossfire.

He usually doesn’t let himself think about this, but it’s easy to fixate on Lilia to avoid the other thought in his mind.

Yuri sniffles and wipes his hand across his face. Lilia catches the sound and turns.

“What happened?"

“Nothing!” Yuri snarls. “I’m ready.” He snatches up his bag and hurries out, too much like Viktor from moments ago.

Yakov knows—knows now, more than ever—that he has made mistakes with Viktor. He is not sure how to avoid repeating them.

“What is going on?” Lilia asks Yakov.

Yakov shrugs. “He does not want to talk about it.” It is true, although it must give Lilia the impression that Yakov has equally little idea what is going on. He is not eager to discuss it with her. He is not entirely sure that Yura was right, that he needed to know Viktor’s secrets, and if Viktor was reluctant to tell Yakov he cannot imagine that he would be eager for Yakov to tell Lilia.

“Fine,” Lilia says. “If he dances, that is all that matters. I have a meeting tonight but I will have him home for dinner at the usual time.” The recrimination in the statement— _ I will be on time, unlike you _ —is obvious, but before Yakov can conjure a rejoinder she turns and follows Yuri out.

And Yakov is left alone in the empty ice rink.

He picks up his phone and goes to his texts. He is not well-acquainted with technology; the phone has a half-dozen applications he’s never opened, and most of his texts are terse and transactional. His texting history with Viktor is particularly one-sided. Viktor likes to talk. Yakov has always thought that he didn’t mind the lack of replies, content with a captive audience, but now he is not so sure.

He is less sure about many things.

Before he can think better of it, he types  _ I will be at home. Come over. _

He doesn’t add  _ if you like  _ or  _ if you want to talk. _ Viktor is perfectly capable of ignoring any instructions from Yakov he doesn’t _ like _ .

Then he gets in his car and drives home. When he arrives, he looks at the phone again, and sees that the text has been marked  _ Read  _ but there is no reply.

He goes inside. He puts things away and finishes the dishes from breakfast, moving them from the drying rack to the cupboard. He and Lilia used to fight endlessly about these details. About who was doing more of the housework, who was dragging down the other’s career. They no longer fought about it, if only because they’d replaced arguments with icy silence. It’s more pleasant to live with, probably, but it wouldn’t have saved their marriage.

Nothing would have done that, except, perhaps, being different people.

He eventually settles on the couch with the newspaper. He still thinks of it as a new piece of furniture even though it must be nearly a decade old at this point. But it is younger than Yura and much, much younger than Yakov, so it is close enough to new. Things stay new longer, maybe, when you are seventy.

The deep worry that has settled in his chest is truly new, though, and unfamiliar. He hasn’t seen Viktor lose his composure as completely as he did at the rink that afternoon in many years—since he was a child, maybe. Anger is not Viktor’s natural state. He is petty, occasionally, and flashes of annoyance bleed through his typical smile, as his relationship with the FFKK stands testament to, but he can’t quite reconcile the cold fury of today.

He glances at the phone again and then puts it away. If Viktor does not wish to talk, or forgive, or anything else, then Yakov cannot make him. Still, the worry remains for an additional half-hour as he reads the newspaper and tries to think only of the printed words.

If relief has a sound, Yakov discovers, it is the sound of Viktor’s knock at his door.

He guesses who it must be instantly. The building itself is nothing fancy, but there is some degree of security; strangers do not find their way to the entrance and neither Lilia nor Yura would ever feel the need to knock. Still, he doesn’t dare believe it entirely as he stands, his joints protesting the movement. When he was a young man, he’d thought that age might bring certainty, might bring wisdom. But experience is many things, and one of them is regret, stacked up over years and years. The protests of an aging body are nothing compared to the complaints of memory.

When he opens the door, Viktor stands there in the hallway. He wears a t-shirt and dark jeans, well-fitted. He thinks Viktor must have once dressed like Yura, in the casual teenage blur of horrible trends, but he can’t conjure an image. He is not sure when Viktor learned to clothe himself with such composure. It is certainly not Yakov who taught him.

Viktor has been putting pins in his hair at the rink, Yakov realizes, because he has taken them out now and the strands hang loose around his face. His bangs fall in his eyes; the longest ends curve around his chin. Yakov has never seen his hair like this, an in-between length. Viktor’s hair was already to his elbows when Yakov first met him, and when he’d cut it he’d chopped it all off at once and never looked back.

Like this, Yakov thinks with a start, he looks a bit like Yura. There is nothing of Yura in the serene unreadability of his expression, though. Whatever had cracked open and spilled out earlier is gone now, back underneath the surface.

There are moments where Yakov thinks he might see a flash of it, a dark shape under the water, and then he blinks and it vanishes.

“We should talk,” Viktor says steadily, not breaking eye contact.

“Yes,” Yakov says, and swings open the door to let him in.

It is not the same apartment where Yakov once half-raised Viktor. Both he and Lilia had moved after the divorce, and this uneasy arrangement back together is only an odd echo of what was once their home. Viktor, Yakov realizes with a start, has no childhood homes to return to—his own parents never married, his mother and stepmother divorced and moved away, and then Yakov and Lilia had done no better.

Yakov has been inside Viktor’s apartment before. It was tasteful and clean and oddly empty. Perhaps it now looks different. At the very least, it is now home to two people instead of one. Yakov lived in an apartment on his own after he retired and it was an ugly thing, a bachelor’s apartment, haphazard and full of the useless trappings of his former life. Then he had married Lilia and they had begun to fill it with things and it had felt like a home, somehow. He never pinned down exactly what had made it change.

Before Yakov can think of a way to begin the conversation, Viktor does it, almost as soon as the door is shut behind him. “I don’t know why Yura wanted so badly to tell you,” Viktor says, crossing his arms. He stands there in the entry for a moment in that position and then begins to pace. “It was truly a long time ago.”

Yakov watches him. “Sit down.”

Viktor stops in his tracks, as though he’s only just realized that he’s pacing back and forth. He sits on the couch and Yakov sits as well, a careful distance apart. Viktor is fidgety, his hands going up to play with his hair. He used to chew on the ends, Yakov remembers in a flash. Lilia had once offhandedly threatened to cut it if he didn’t stop that right now, and Viktor had physically frozen for a moment as he tried to judge whether she meant it. Then he’d laughed and waved it off.

But Yakov can’t quite remember if he ever caught him chewing his hair again.

“It was a long time ago,” Viktor repeats, but something about the way he says it makes it seem like it wasn’t really, in the same sense that the couch is still new, will still be new half a decade on. Some things never become familiar. “That was a lie, though. I do know why Yura wanted to tell you. He was—he trusts you.”

“Does he,” Yakov says.

“Yes,” Viktor says. “I think he and I—well, we are alike in some ways, so maybe we understand each other a little. But he thinks you will do what is best for him. So I think it felt counterfactual to that, when I told him that you did not know.”

“Why did you not tell me?” Yakov asks. He is capable of math. Viktor would have been fifteen. He’d won Gold at Junior Worlds. And for the life of him, Yakov cannot find a moment in his memory when he thought that something was wrong.

“Why would I have?” Viktor replies. He sighs and rests his elbows on his knees, covers his face with his hands.

“I was your coach!”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “And whatever I might have wanted, you were responsible for my career and nothing else.”

That stings, a little. “What,” Yakov snaps. “Do you think I do not care at all for you?”

" _ If you leave now, you can never come back _ ," Viktor says. It takes Yakov a moment to recognize them as his own and then it is another moment before he realizes that Viktor, who can hardly remember what he'd eaten the day before, has apparently committed them to memory.

Viktor seems to take his momentary silence as recognition, because he smiles. There is something quietly sad about it. "I'm not a fool, Yakov. You were never under the obligation to care for me unconditionally."

Yakov is rarely at a loss for words but if anyone is capable of stunning him speechless it is Viktor. Still, he sputters out a reply only moments later, “What did you think I would have done?”

“I don’t know,” Viktor says. “I didn’t—I told no one. Please don’t take it personally.”

This feels very personal, but Yakov tries nonetheless. “You told Yura.”

“Well,” Viktor says. “He had the right to know, I thought, if he wanted to. And he asked and so we told him.”

“We?”

“Well, me,” Viktor says. “And Yuuri.”

“You told Katsuki.”

“Of course,” Viktor says, and then he laughs. “Or perhaps not, when I told no one for thirteen years but—he is the first person I told.” He pauses, and then says simply, “I love him.”

“What did Katsuki say?” Yakov asks, because he is still trying to think of the right thing.

“A lot of things,” Viktor says. “I was afraid, I think, to tell him, because it becomes a habit, keeping a secret. Not speaking ingrains itself, and then when you do it every instinct you have is telling you not to even when you…” he trails off. “Yuuri knows who I am, I think, maybe more than anyone else. And he still loves me, so I thought—if he knows this, when he knows everything else, will it make him stop? And I did not think it would, and I was right.”

“Afraid,” Yakov repeats.

“Yes,” Viktor says. “Well. He threatened me, of course, that if I told anyone lies about him I’d never survive as a skater. And even when that did not feel so threatening anymore—why would I want anyone to know? What do you think when you hear these things about someone? If no one but me knew—well, at least no one could use it against me.”

“Whatever you decided to do,” Yakov says after a moment, “You could have told me.”

“Maybe,” Viktor says, and sits up again. “But it didn’t feel that way at the time. And it was my own fault anyway.” He says it dismissively, as though it hardly bears mentioning. Yakov stiffens, and Viktor seems to realize that he has said something wrong, because he smiles, brittle and terribly fake.

“Stupid boy,” Yakov says. This whole time he has said little to nothing because he does not know the right words. He has uncovered a minefield he has unknowingly been walking over for thirteen years, and now that he senses the potential damage it is almost too much to move. But the words come easily now, the disbelief of it overwriting the apprehension of saying the wrong thing. When he speaks, though, the smile drops off Viktor’s face, leaving just quiet devastation. “Vitya.” They are sitting too far apart and he has to stand and sit back down beside him before he can pull Viktor into a hug. “It was not your fault. Whatever happened—it was not your fault.”

Viktor makes a noise that Yakov has never heard from him before, a sharp sort of exhalation, like all the air has been knocked out of him. Then he hugs him back tightly, burying his face in Yakov’s shoulder.

Yakov pets his hair, because Viktor has always liked it, as Viktor’s breath comes in short little gasps like he’s trying not to sob. He mostly succeeds; when his breathing settles out, Yakov’s shirt is only a little damp.

Viktor’s distress feels so physically tangible in that moment that Yakov can’t imagine how he could have failed to see it for all those years. He wonders what he said, what he did, to make Viktor think it was better to remain silent, and he wonders if he can forgive himself for it.

“Vitya,” he says after a moment, testing the waters.

“I’m all right,” Viktor says, anticipating the question. “It’s just that I don’t think I realized until now how much I needed to hear you say that.”

Yakov grips him tightly, maybe a little more than he might have otherwise. But he feels that if he holds him long enough it might somehow reach back across time and make the young Viktor who he had failed feel less alone.

Eventually, Viktor sits up and Yakov lets go.  He wipes a stray tear off his face and Yakov pretends not to notice. “I am sorry,” Viktor says. “I should have trusted you.”

“I should have given you cause to,” Yakov says. “If you did not think you could come to me with this, that was my failure, not yours.” Whatever Viktor might have been on his way to becoming at fifteen years old—a champion, the rebirth of Russia’s skating glory, a living legend—Yakov knows better than anyone that he was a child.

“Well,” Viktor says. “I will forgive you if you will forgive me.”

“I will not,” Yakov says. “You have done nothing wrong.”

The smile that Viktor produces is a little more real. “Well,” his tone is rueful. “I should not have said that to Yura.”

There are still pieces to this that Yakov does not understand, and it is Yuri’s part in it that makes the least sense. Why should Yura know at all? “What did happen this year?” Yakov asks. “This man—who is this man? He  _ spoke _ to Yura?”

“He spoke to Yura,” Viktor says. “And nothing more—we will not let him. Yuuri and I. My Yuuri.”

“Who is he?” Yakov repeats.

“If I do not tell you,” Viktor says, “Will you be satisfied with that?”

“I can make you do nothing,” Yakov replies.

“If I  _ do  _ tell you,” Viktor changes tactics, “Can you promise me you will do nothing?”

Yakov can promise this. “If you want nothing done. And if he is no threat to Yura.”

“I want nothing done,” Viktor says. “Romano. He works for—”

“The ISU,” Yakov says. “That  _ fucking— _ what did he—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Viktor says simply, cutting him off. As much as part of Yakov is screaming for answers, he lets it go. Yakov is not sure he wants to know what happened, even if Viktor wanted to speak about it; the questions of what should be done is perhaps for another time, but if Viktor truly would rather let it remain buried, Yakov will not force him to do anything. 

Still, he has other questions.

“You told Yura when he met him?”

“No,” Viktor shakes his head. “Yuuri pulled him away and we—warned him, I suppose. And told him we would give him answers if he wanted them, which only seemed fair. He didn’t want them then but—this week, I suppose, he wanted to know. So we spoke about it last night. I didn’t realize then that he was so upset I hadn’t told you. But I understand it now.”

Yakov doesn’t, not really. “Do you.”

“Yes,” Viktor says. “But you don’t. Yura trusts you, and when I did not—well, I think Yura has been given cause to distrust people before, and so it made him doubt. He needed it to be tested, then, and I suppose I cannot blame him.”

Yakov glances at the clock. “He will be home soon.”

Viktor winces. “I should go,” he says. Then he straightens his shoulders. “But I shouldn’t leave things as they are between us.”

“Before you go,” Yakov says. “I have something for you.”

“Oh?” Viktor says.

Yakov leaves him sitting on the couch and heads for the study. He hasn’t opened the drawer and looked at the little piece of glass in months at least, maybe more likely years. It’s an impulse that makes him find it now. It’s just the way he remembers, remarkably blue and perfectly smooth.

He comes back to the living room and drops it in Viktor’s hand.

“Oh,” Viktor says, and lifts it up to the light. It is exactly the color of his eyes. “It’s lovely. You really can’t see through it, can you?”

“No,” Yakov says.

“Where is it from?” Viktor asks.

“Sevastapol,” Yakov says. “A long time ago.”

“You don’t want it?” Viktor wonders. “You’ve kept it this long, it must mean something.”

“Keep it,” is all Yakov says. It meant something, once, maybe. But he hardly remembers the woman’s face now, and he thinks it is closer to a physical token of regret, of things that disappear into the current of a long life, than it is a positive memory. He had hoped in the instant that he thought of it that it might mean something better to Viktor.

There is something bright in Viktor’s eyes as he closes his hand around it, so maybe he was right.

“Thank you,” Viktor says. He slips the glass into his pocket.

Then he jerks his head up and looks at the window. “Oh. It’s raining.”

Yakov looks, startled, and realizes that Viktor is right. Droplets are beginning to bead against the glass.

“Do you have a coat?” Yakov asks. When Viktor shakes his head, Yakov goes to the hook by the door and retrieves his jacket and tosses it towards him. “Give it back tomorrow.”

Viktor blinks at him, as though genuinely startled for a moment, and then he smiles. “Thank you.” The jacket doesn’t fit him quite right when he shrugs it on, but it is waterproof at least, and better than a t-shirt even in the warm rain of summer.

Sitting on the couch in Yakov’s coat, he looks very young, and Yakov is flooded again with relief just as when he heard the doorbell. Of course. Viktor is very young, and this moment has come too late but not so late that it is beyond mattering.

There is a key in the lock, and both of them look up as Yuri opens the door.

When he sees Viktor there, he freezes. Then he dumps his skate bag on the ground and begins to shed his own jacket in a frenzied motion, hanging it up and starting for his room.

“Don’t leave that there,” Yakov says out of habit, and instantly regrets it.

“I’ll get it in a minute,” Yuri says.  _ Once he leaves  _ is the unspoken part of the sentence. Yakov looks at Viktor.

“I’m just going,” Viktor says lightly, “Yura, are you coming for dinner tonight?”

“No,” Yuri says flatly. He doesn’t look at either of them.

“Alright,” Viktor says in the same smooth tone, as though the refusal doesn’t bother him in the slightest. It does, Yakov thinks, but even knowing that it is difficult to see through the cracks. “Then could we talk privately for a moment before I go?”

Yuri turns back and looks, then, his expression stiff. “No.”

Yakov wants to snap at him to stop being  _ petty,  _ but that isn’t it, not the way Yurochka jerks his chin down again and doesn’t quite look to see his expression. He’s seen Yuri at his most snide and petty, has watched him gloat and kick and insult. Yura is capable of cruelty, but this isn’t it. This is defensiveness.

“Then I’ll say it here,” Viktor says. “Yura, I’m sorry.”

Yuri’s spine stiffens and he freezes in place halfway through another step. Viktor gives no sign that he’s seen it with his voice, although Yakov is looking right at him and can see that he’s looking straight at Yura. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you,” Viktor says, “And I shouldn’t have asked you to keep secrets for me. Not from someone you trusted, even if I could not—” he steals a glance at Yakov and breaks off. “I should not have punished you for being a stronger person than I am, and for that I am truly sorry.”

Yuri’s shoulders have slumped. Yakov still can’t read his expression from this angle, but he knows better than to move. There is silence for two heartbeats.

Then Viktor continues. “Really, I should thank you. I wouldn’t have spoken of it otherwise, and I do, I think, feel lighter for it.” He tips his head towards Yakov and smiles, and perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but Yakov thinks it’s real.

“Goodnight, Yakov, Yura,” Viktor straightens the borrowed coat and stands up from the couch.

“Wait.”

Viktor turns back. Yuri has deigned to look at them again. His face is flushed and his eyes a little red. He sniffles, once, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “What’s dinner?”

_ “Shabu-shabu.” _

“What’s that?”

“Sliced meat and vegetables. You cook it yourself at the table in boiling water.”

“Is Katsudon making it?” Yuri asks, with a half degree of suspicion.

“He’s boiling water and cutting vegetables,” Viktor says lightly.

“Fine,” Yuri says. “He can’t screw that up. Let me get—stuff.”

He vanishes into his bedroom. Yakov can hear the slam of the dresser drawers. He used to wonder when Yura would become too willful to want to keep a room down the hall from his coach, when he would insist on moving out on his own. Now he wonders how infrequently Yura will begin to come home at night, how much of his clothing will migrate to Viktor and Yuuri’s apartment.

“Vitya,” he says in the momentary silence.

“Yes?”

“Yura is not a stronger person than you.”

“You underestimate him, I think,” Viktor says.

“No,” Yakov says. “I think we both have the right measure of Yura.”

Viktor looks at him again as the words sink in. Then he shakes his head. “I should have told you years ago, I think.”

Yakov is not sure what he would have done, if Viktor had come to him with this at fifteen. He would like to think he might have said the right thing, done the right thing, but it is long enough ago that he is not sure. Yakov says instead, “You should not punish yourself for what has or has not happened, I think.”

Viktor laughs. “You asked earlier what Yuuri said, when I told him.”

“Yes?”

“He said that too.” Viktor says.

Yuri comes back in with an armful of clothes, which he begins to shove into his skate bag. “I’m ready.”

“Alright,” Viktor says. “Thank you, Yakov.” He hugs him again, suddenly, without warning. Yakov hugs him back automatically. This, at least, is familiar about Viktor. Yakov is not a person who gives hugs, not really, but Viktor has been demanding them since he was a child and so Yakov has learned.

Yakov is capable of that at least, of learning to give what others need. He did not manage it with the woman he once went to Sevastapol with, whose name he no longer remembers, or with Lilia, or with Viktor all those years ago, but he is not so old that he has run out of better versions of himself to be capable of becoming.

Yuri leads the way out, and Viktor glances back once and smiles before the door shuts behind them. Yakov goes to the window and waits, watches them spill out the door of the building onto the street and walk to the car and drive away, and then he watches the street lights go on and the drops of rain run down the glass while he waits for Lilia to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> This took me three months to write, so if you can, a comment would mean a lot.
> 
> The title is from [You're Somebody Else by Flora Cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0sqWo8BHt8).
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/). Come talk to me!


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